Just North of Whoville by Turiskylie, Joyce (mobi ebook reader TXT) 📕

“Then why are you trying to give it to me?”

“I’ve noticed that week number three is generally when patients lie about their progress.”

“A patient is in the nuthouse. I’m on a futon. Completely different.”

‘When you sit your ass down on my futon, you’re my patient. Why is this so hard for you?”

“I just don’t see it making a difference in my life. I’m sorry. I tried the Christmas Blend. But it just tasted like regular coffee. They just put it in a holiday cup. And everywhere I go they’re playing Christmas music. It’s not even December yet!”

“Okay. Just take a breath,” she said like yoga instructor in a mental ward. “Let’s start with one thing. Christmas music. Why does it bug the shit out of you?”

“It’s just the same music. Every year. The same Top 40 I’ve heard for thirty-four years.”

“I thought you were thirty-five.”

“Not yet. And why is everyone harping on my age?”

“Dorrie,” she said clicking her fingers and waving them in front of my face. “Snap out of it. What are you doing for Thanksgiving on Thursday?”

“Nothing. My family’s back home….”

“If you’re going to have The Best Christmas Ever, you need to have a good Thanksgiving. Go to a friend’s house. Have a nice dinner.”

“No one invited me.”

She began mumbling things in Spanish to herself like Ricky Ricardo and ended with, “If you were a dog, they would drag you to a metal table and stick a needle in your ass. Dorrie… Are you a glass half-full person, or a glass half-empty one?”

“I don’t know. What’s in the glass?”

The next day at work, I got on the phone with Steve. “I was thinking I could make dinner and we could go over the play.”

He seemed a little distracted. Like he was busy on one of his hook-up sites----or worse.

“Um…well…this uh…. This isn’t like a date or anything?”

“NO! It’s not. It’s really, really not.”

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to ask.”

“Good god. What is wrong with you? No. Not a date. I know your type is twenty year-old actresses with low self-esteem.”

“I wasn’t saying you were old…”

“Why is everyone fixated on my age? My psychiatrist says I’m supposed to do this and I thought it would be a nice gesture. So do you want to come over for stupid Thanksgiving dinner or not?”

“Well….okay.”

“Fine. Was that so hard?”

9

Thanksgiving is my kind of holiday. You cook a big meal and you eat. No gifts to buy, no songs to sing, no irritating decorations everywhere you go. In grammar school, we would simply trace our hand and make a turkey. Here you go, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving. What’s for dinner? Turkey? What a surprise!

In fact, it would likely be my favorite holiday if it weren’t for its close proximity to Christmas. If we could move it to say April, when there’s not a whole lot going on…. I think it would really get the full attention it deserves. I wouldn’t even mind a few more Thanksgiving specials on TV. Or a really classic Thanksgiving film. It’s never been done. But I guess there’s not a lot of conflict in eating and sleeping.

Thanksgiving morning, I woke up early and watched footage of the President pardoning the turkey on TV. As much as I enjoy eating turkey, I’m always happy to see one little guy get away. I could never kill a turkey, or any animal for that matter. But if they’re already dead and in the supermarket…

I know that’s no justification for my moral conundrum. But turkey is delicious, and I’m not sure how safe it would be to eat an old turkey that died of natural causes. Even then, after all those years together, I’d have grown too attached to eat him.

Despite my love for animals, the closest I came to a pet as a child was a hamster. Cuddles. I had just turned four when Santa left a rodent cage under the tree.

An empty rodent cage.

“Dear Dorrie,” my mother read the note taped to the cage. “I brought you a very sweet hamster for Christmas because you were such a good girl this year. Unfortunately, your hamster jumped out of my sack while I was putting presents under the tree. Go with your Mommy and Daddy to the basement where you will surely find him. Love, Santa Claus.”

It wasn’t exactly a horse. But I looked at it as a good omen for next Christmas. After all, he had noticed that I’d been good. This was likely a test. I just had to show Santa that I had the right stuff to take care of this little guy.

While Mom was busy with breakfast, Dad and I went down to the basement to look for him. We moved boxes and bags and practically mountains in our search party of two. As Mom called down to us that the eggs were getting cold, we were hot on his trail of hamster droppings. I saw something brown and white scurry behind a suitcase and started squealing. Within seconds, my father scooped him up in a cardboard box.

I was the happiest child in the world as I peered into the box and saw the new little man in my life---Cuddles.

We took him upstairs to his brand new home and let him settle into his wood chips and toilet paper tube.

The next day, Cuddles died.

Possibly from something he ate in the basement, my father surmised. I was a mess. My beloved hamster. Cuddles, we hardly knew ye.

Santa was going to be so disappointed in me.

“Cuddles was a good hamster,” my father eulogized at the backyard funeral that afternoon. “He uh…liked to run on his wheel. And uh…”

“He liked peanuts,” I reminded him thru my tears.

“Yes, he